Donuts! Hot fresh NOW!

So I am quickly learning that this eating healthy on the road is much trickier than it looks. Especially when you go to dinner with your sister and her kids. Because if said sister sees a Krispy Kreme near your hotel, she just might decide that it sounds like a good idea for dessert.

It was fun, though, because the kids wanted to see how the donuts were made, and I guess I've never paid enough attention in a Krispy Kreme before, or the ones I've been to are more stealthy about their donut production. But we got to see the whole thing. Donuts being conveyed down to oil, flipped over, cooled briefly, and then doused through a fountain of glaze. And of course, the magical sign was lit up, so our donuts were HOT! (Or, as my sister and I kept saying, "Hot Fresh NOW!", because that's what the sign at the Krispy Kreme near my apartment says.)

I'd never actually had a Krispy Kreme hot before. Warmed up in the microwave is NOT the same. It seriously just melted in my mouth. And was delicious. And I was good, and only had the one. Though it was really tempting to have another one. :)

Delicious Donuts Shower Art from Ugly Baby

Wow...

Kids take a TON out of you. We picked everyone up at the airport around 11 a.m., and dropped them off at their hotel a touch before 6, and we were beat. Now, granted, I had been to the gym in the morning, and there was a REALLY big flight of steps that Peter begged to be carried up. And since his mom had Lila and his dad had all of their stuff, I carried him up a couple of flights, and Jeremy carried him the rest of the way. My legs are STILL feeling those stairs. :(

But we did have a blast. The light rail train and aquarium were HUGE hits with Peter, and I think Lila enjoyed seeing some of the fish. She's still just at the single word stage of things, so it was a lot of "Look!" and other babbling. The real great hit with her was actually the lavender pillow. It was soft and smelled good, and so she snuggled it immediately. I also like to think that she loved it a lot because it was made from a T-shirt that used to belong to her good buddy Jeremy (or, as my sister's husband dubbed him, "Friend Jeremy," since he isn't their uncle). :)

After that we managed to drag ourselves to a night of fiction reading (by other people, not us) at the Wayward, and then zonked out. We were SO grateful for the lazy Sunday we had planned. We spent a bit of time sifting through some books to ease the strain on a couple of bookcases, and then headed to the Cinebarre for Iron Man II. I am now totally in love with that theater. Mid-afternoon on a Sunday seems to be a great time to go, as it wasn't too crowded. So we got our snacks and drinks delivered to our seats relatively quickly, and got to enjoy the movie in a mostly quiet theater. Plus, I had sangria to drink. Jeremy got a $5 milkshake. :) I love it!

Came home to make somewhat disastrous giant burritos (the structural integrity of Jeremy's collapsed midway through, and mine decided that sour cream was a good addition to my shirt), but then we got to watch two more episodes of Doctor Who. Though they were probably not my favorites of this season (episode 1 is holding that honor at the moment), even though they're all about the Weeping Angels, there were still good moments. And we're caught up in terms of what's available thus far! :)

In other news, Trader Joe's has blue cheese slices! It's technically blue cheese blended with Monterey Jack, but whatever. They're yummy. My sandwich today is ham and blue cheese with tomato and mayo on a big soft baguette thingie. Delicious! :)

Om nom nom...

One of my favorite dishes in the world is Shepherd's Pie. Unfortunately, Jeremy isn't fond of cream of mushroom soup, but I have managed to replace it with cream of celery soup successfully. (He grew up eating cream of mushroom soup on EVERYTHING, thanks to his grandmother. He just can't take it any more! :) )

The best part about Shepherd's Pie, though, isn't eating it fresh out of the oven. It's always way too hot, and it falls apart. The best part is letting it cool, completely, before you even try to cut it. Then it holds together in an appropriate pie shape (okay, more like a loaf shape, because I make mine in a Pyrex loaf pan), and it is wonderful reheated.

So that's what I did last night. Broke out all of the pots and pans it takes to make this meal, cooked it, let it cool for a bit out of the oven, and then plopped it into the fridge, not to be cut till this morning. And now I've got lunch for the rest of the week, and dinner for tomorrow night (when we need something quick and easy). Hurrah! :)

My recipe is:

1 lb ground beef
2 packages (the entire box) of instant mashed potatoes (or approximately 8 servings, if you have a big box of potato flakes)
1 can of cream of SOMETHING soup (the original was with mushroom, now it's celery, though I was tempted to try cream of chicken this time)
1/2 to 3/4 of a can of mixed peas and carrots (if you can find the short can, that's the right amount, otherwise just guess)
shredded cheese (I use something cheddar-y, but any cheese will do, really)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Brown the ground beef in a skillet. Don't drain the grease from it.
Cook the potatoes as directed on the box. You want thicker potatoes, so let them stand if you have to.
Mix the can of soup and veggies together, and DO NOT add the milk to the soup. You want it good and thick.

Then layer in a loaf pan (from bottom to top):
potatoes
meat
soup
potatoes
meat
soup
potatoes
cheese

Put the loaf pan in the oven for about 20 minutes, or until the grease is bubbling, and the cheese on the top starts to brown. Yeah, the grease bubbling part is kind of gross, but it helps to hold this meal together.

This makes about 6 servings for me, but I cut my slices pretty thick, so you could probably get 8 servings out of it if you are more moderate with your slicing.

This meal is extra tasty when it's cold outside, but I like it year round! :)

Pyrex Crazy Daisy Bread Loaf Baking Ovenware from Good Pickins

It's fall, for sure!

The weather has turned directly into fall, and just about right on schedule, too. Seattle has a good tendency to turn warmer around Memorial Day, turn hot around the 4th of July, and turn cooler around Labor Day. It's a good system, if you ask me, because I'm perfectly happy with about 3 months of summer-ish weather (with only a week or two of summer heat).

Of course, this seems to mean that I need to stop thinking that I can get away with more summer-y clothing options. Apparently a knee length skirt with footless tights and ballet flats just doesn't work for going out to the bus stop in the morning. I'll probably be fine on the way home, of course. :) Jeremy said we need to get me more winter-y clothes, and I responded that I just need to learn how to dress for the weather better. I've got a whole drawer full of corduroy pants and sweaters. :)

I can sort of tell that the seasons are turning by what Jeremy reports to me as available at the farmer's market near his work. On Tuesdays when he's coming straight home from work, he heads over there on his lunch break, and we frantically text back and forth so I can help him choose some fresh produce for our meals. This week, it was less fruit than previous weeks, and a bag of purple potatoes. This is mostly for my love of all things purple, but also for my love of strange potato dishes (like the blue mashed potatoes that we had for Thanksgiving in Carbondale one year). I had purple potato salad at the Can't Stop the Serenity event in Seattle, and decided that I needed to make purple potatoes at home, too. :)

I think the plan for these is just to boil them and eat them relatively unadorned, so we can see what they taste like before I start doing more odd things to them. But really, how often do you get to eat purple food that isn't grapes?!

More food adventures!

A few miscellaneous comments about food and related excitement. :)

Saturday night was my first night at the D&D game, and the hosts celebrated by making all kinds of yummy food. My favorite was the panang style green beans, which were absolutely nummy. I decided I need to learn how to make those ASAP. There was also bok choy salad and grilled chicken and pork. I kept dipping bits of meat into the sauce from my green beans. :) (And I did track down a recipe for panang style sauce, which I will be making soonishly, I hope.)

Wednesday night's dinner was a bit of a disaster, unfortunately. My plan was for lemon pepper and balsamic vinegar salmon (from a recipe found in a magazine), along with green beans and fingerling potatoes. The first flaw was the salmon. Salmon has BONES in it! This was the first time I had ever tried to cook salmon (actually, probably the first time I have ever cooked fish in general), and I was traumatized to discover that the salmon had bones in it and skin on one side. Jeremy suggested cooking it anyway, as he had seen salmon prepared with the skin on and had to pick out bones before.

Cooking it was the next adventure. I suspect I had the heat up too high, and it didn't really "brown" like I was anticipating. Then again, I'm not sure that salmon should brown like ground beef does, so maybe I did get that part right. The balsamic reduction didn't work as nicely as planned, instead turning all bubbly right away and not smelling all that grand. It looked all black and unpleasant, like a tar pit, and I don't think much of it managed to stick to the salmon itself. The pan, however, seemed to be the perfect substance for it to stick to.

In the end, the salmon was mostly cooked. But between dealing with the bones and not liking the taste of it as much as I normally do (it tasted peculiarly fishy to me), I didn't eat much of mine. Jeremy soldiered through a bit more of his. The cats were highly interested in the salmon we didn't eat, but we decided with the tiny little bones, it wasn't a good plan to give them the leftovers. We also weren't sure how cats would deal with lemon pepper and balsamic vinegar.

The green beans turned out fine (thank goodness for microwave steamers!), but the potatoes weren't exactly ideal either. I bought a different type this time, which may not have been real fingerling potatoes. I also got impatient with them when the salmon and green beans were ready to eat, and the potatoes were not, so I may have rushed them a bit too much. Either way, they weren't nearly as tender and yummy as last week's potatoes.

I'm sure there will be more cooking adventures in the future. When I'm in town at least, Wednesday night is our "date night" where we stay home and have dinner and watch a movie. Thus far, dinner on Wednesdays has been a bit more elaborate than what we'd normally make. I've also informed Jeremy that he gets cooking responsibilities one of these Wednesdays. :)

Om nom nom

(a.k.a. I hope my potatoes don't explode! :) ) A variety of circumstances have been conspiring to make me start cooking again. A boyfriend who works the same hours as me, the weather in Seattle cooling off, finally going to Trader Joe's in Seattle, and looking at how much money I spent on restaurants last month (YOUCH!). It also helps that Jeremy seems to like my cooking, no matter how unusual or haphazard it tends to be. :)

Last night was Corona garlic lime steak and fingerling potatoes. The idea for the steak was a combination of Jerome's explanation to me that beer or soda is an integral part of any marinade and me seeing a recipe for garlic lime chicken on the back of the garlic powder container. Since we had Corona and lime juice on hand, I was game. :) It turned out great, though I need to remember to go for thinner cuts of meat when shopping. As it was, I took everything out of the pan and sliced it up when I discovered I was about to have black outsides and red insides on the steak. No good!

The potatoes, I think, are my new favorites. They seemed to cook up a lot faster than normal potatoes (probably because they're bite sized!), and they were perfectly yummy with just some melted whipped butter. Plus, we could eat the skins (something I won't do with russet potatoes)! Steak and potatoes are not what we eat regularly, but I think I'm going to get a request for that meal again very soon. :)

I've also noticed that I'm getting better about using leftovers and things we have around the apartment. I scavenged leftover kalamata olives for our tacos on Monday night and leftover Havarti cheese for garlic bread on Tuesday night. Not remotely traditional, but delicious nonetheless. I think I got a bit aggravated when I realized how much stuff in my fridge and how much stuff in Jeremy's fridge needed to be tossed because it was expired. I'm even planning to figure out what to do with the random cans of beans (and dried... lentils, we think?) that are the remnants of Jeremy's ex's stocking of the pantry. It's sort of a new realm for me, because I don't even know what some of this stuff is, let alone how to cook it. Hurrah for the intertubez! :)

Next step after I figure out cooking from relative scratch? Baking. We have a plethora of frozen bananas and a banana bread recipe, but I am terrified of trying to bake from scratch. That's why the good people at Betty Crocker et al. made mixes!

(Oh, the alternate title is what I thought right as I put my container of leftover potatoes into the microwave at lunch. The potatoes did not explode!)

I CAN cook! :)

So one of my goals for the new year (I don't do resolutions) is to try to do more cooking, particularly more cooking that does not just involve throwing something into the microwave for 2 minutes or less. This is mainly just me finally getting tired of eating like a college student, I think, and getting tired of eating the same meals every week.

Last night, I made steak and potatoes. The steak was just pan-fried, with some Asian sea salt mix and extra garlic rubbed into it, and turned out FAR tastier than I expected. Right before it was done, I realized I had no steak sauce, which would have been a tragedy if the steak had not turned out as well as it did. The potatoes were a variation on the recipe on the back of the Lipton's onion dip mix box. I'm not moving entirely away from cooking with SOME prepared items, and the potatoes with dry onion dip on them are like the best way to eat potatoes anyway. :)

And the best part of this meal is that after eating it last night, I had leftovers for my lunch today. The potatoes are even tastier today, I think, and the steak is still pretty good. I've got another bunch of potatoes at home, too. :)

If I had thought about it last night, there could have been pictures. But I didn't. So there aren't. :) Instead, you'll just have to imagine the yumminess. :)

Yummy!

One of the things I love about working in downtown Seattle is how many good places to eat we have within walking distance of our office. It took me a little while to start venturing out and finding them, but I've collected quite a list of "favorites." Of course, my wallet dictates that I don't get out to them as often as I might like, but it's still a nice treat every now and then, particularly on days when my work schedule tells me that bringing my lunch would be difficult, at best.

One of my favorites is the Dahlia Bakery (of the Tom Arnold collective of restaurants, all of which are within a block or two of my office). Now there are times when the options are a bit hit or miss with me--sometimes, they've concocted a menu of sandwiches that just don't appeal to my pickiness, but today was a total hit day. I had to decide between a BLT and buffalo chicken salad sandwich. I went with the latter, and I think I made a good decision... although I bet the BLT is super good as well. :) Of course, I'm about to dismantle the sandwich and just eat the filling with a fork, but hey, that works too. :)

Yesterday was also a good lunch day, as I found a gyro place that uses lamb, and it's even better than El Greco, which is the gyro place about a block or two from where we lived in Carbondale. Sorry to the animal lovers out there (which I do count myself among), but lamb is tasty. Unfortunately, if I tried to not eat cute animals ever, I'd have to be a vegetarian, and that just doesn't work for me. I have way too many issues with getting appropriate nutrition to cut meat out of my diet. :(

And now I'll stop making everyone who will read this in the mid-afternoon hungry. :)

To walk or not to walk...

So last night, I decided that the best option for me to get dinner was for me to walk to the Riverwalk, where I was sure I could find food. The hotel has a restaurant downstairs, but that's where I've been having my breakfasts, and I wanted a change of scenery for dinner. So I walked, and found food. Of course, I found all of the INTERESTING food after I had already eaten, mainly because I fixated on the first place I saw, and did not look around to see what other options were there. What can I say? I was hungry!

As it turns out, there are a TON of restaurants down there, and it's a really pleasant location as well, right along the San Antonio River (which I say is a fake river, but as it turns out, it's a quasi-real river with modifications). The only problem is that walking is the easiest way to get there, and it's probably about half a mile each way if I walk. Seeing as my only pair of shoes that I brought with me is my sandals (comfy, but not great for long walks), I may have to see what the dinner menu looks like downstairs. If it's the same as the room service menu, I guess I'm hiking again. :)

I'm really liking this short trip--basically a day of travel on either end and only two days on the ground. Sure, I could do without the need to spend an entire day in transit, but I pick my hours back up on the way home tomorrow, making it a 26 hour long day, but meaning I'll have the evening to spend with my sweetie! :)

I think I'm still full!

So somehow or another, I seem to have ended up on what might be the neatest "junk mail" mailing list ever. Every so often, we get a glossy little ad for a restaurant, much nicer than a lot of the ones you normally see. Normally, this would qualify as more junk mail, but in this case, the glossy little ads include a gift card for the restaurant in question. This has happened to me twice now, and so we've tried out a couple of restaurants that we probably wouldn't have gone to otherwise.

I know in a portion of my brain that it's all just a clever marketing scheme--give people a gift card, and that will get them in the door, as well as potentially get them to spend more than they might have without the gift card. Well, clever marketing scheme or not, I like this one. :)

The first one we received was Cutters Bay House, which is RIGHT on Elliott Bay (great views, if it's clear out). We took my sister there when she was in town, and the three of us ate for about $50. This was, of course, without drinks--the drink prices were a bit more than we were willing to pay. But we all got sushi, which was delicious, and Megan and Jerome had soup, while I had a salad (which I think was the oddest salad I've ever seen, but still pretty good). And, as a bonus to their clever marketing, we liked it enough that we're going to go back when Jerome's dad is in town. :) (Plus I'm blogging about it, so free advertising!) Their menu has a good deal of seafood on it, which they get from Pike Place Market, since it's pretty much RIGHT next door. :)

Last night, we went to Palomino, which was a bit trickier to find (it's inside the City Center shopping area), and a bit more expensive ($60 for 2, again with no drinks), but still definitely worth it. Their menu is a lot more Italian food, though it's sort of non-traditional Italian inspired dishes. Tasty, though. Very tasty. And yes, I do believe I'm still full from dinner last night, which was a salad and Kobe ravioli for me. (*)

So here's hoping that I'm on some super special mailing list for good now, and keep getting these gift cards in the mail. Memo to whoever's clever marketing idea this was: It works. :)

(*) Jerome says it's a travesty to put Kobe beef in ravioli. I said I didn't care, and I wanted to try it. Much cheaper than Kobe steak, that's for sure. :)

Lost season finale tonight!

Not sure how many of my readers are Lost fans, but I gotta blog about it today. I will probably also blog about it tomorrow. :)

I've discovered that what's worse than having to wait each week for the next episode is the knowledge that after the season finale tonight, I have to wait until like September or October or something for the new season to start. WAY more torture than waiting a whole week for new goodness. I am way too much into instant gratification, I think. :)

I am pretty pleased, however, that I have managed to avoid spoiler pages and no just find out what I had to wait for. Being on the West Coast, I know there are folks on the East Coast already blogging about Lost before it airs here. But no, I resist the urge to go find out what's going to happen. The suspense is good, if a bit maddening. :)

But man, I gotta find a show to watch on Thursdays for the summer... either that, or remember to send back our Netflix DVDs faster, so we have more movies to watch. :)

+++++

In other news, someone in the office brought in fresh bread a few days ago, and it's still pretty good. Top it off with the blackberry preserves that another co-worker brought in a few weeks ago, and it's delicious. But to me it smells like tea... weird, I know...

Ugh part deux...

So the ickiness of Friday decided to stick around, and, in fact, I think I'm still fighting with it right now. Either that, or my office is super mega warm now that the weather outside is behaving properly. Seeing as I've been back and forth out of another office all morning, I'm voting for the super mega warm... and it doesn't help when you're wearing knee high socks and calf high boots. :)

Jerome also got hit with the ickiness, which we are now pretty sure could just be allergies. This is our first April in Seattle, and I KNOW there's a lot of pollen in the air right now. It's spring. Everything is blooming, growing leaves, etc. And they've resumed the Duck Tours that run past our office hourly... :)

I'm off to Olympia for the rest of the week, for more thrilling research. Though Jerome is bummed that he doesn't get to tag along (and I am also bummed for the same reason), it does look like there will be multiple Thai restaurants pretty darn close to my hotel. Sweet. :)

Random fun fact

It is totally possible to smash a Fruit Roll-Up that's still in the package. Especially in my bag.

Don't ask why I didn't think this was possible. I was mostly just hoping that they were less squishable than, say, a Little Debbie snack. I think I was correct in that assumption. :)

Oh the joys of not entirely as planned. I thought I'd be at the library for two days, yet here I am at work. Though I do get to go back to the library in the morning.

I already know I will have no time for any crafts at all until probably Sunday. I also have very little time for movies and such, though I can apparently get work done if the movie is on behind me. Short version: don't sit on the couch and try to work. :)

Argh!

So even though I'm not the most domestic person in the world, I do try. Every once in a while, I'll go all out with cooking dinner. (Okay, every once in a RARE while.) Mostly, this does involve a lot of prepared things that just need to be thrown together, but occasionally it's more elaborate.

Last night, it was supposed to be pot roast and potatoes, in the crock pot. I put it all together before I left for work, and set my little handy-dandy plug in timer, that tells the crock pot when it should turn on and off. Only somehow, it didn't communicate with the crock pot. The timer ran, and it clicked the little switches back to the off position, but the crock pot never turned on. So I came home to a cold hunk of raw meat, which had been sitting out for 10 hours.

Suffice it to say, no pot roast for us. :( But now I don't know if it's the timer, the crock pot, or the outlet that failed me, which puts a crimp in any crock pot related plans that I might have had--at least until I have time to do a test run when I'm home... but who uses their crock pot when they're actually at home?! :)

Mmmm, strawberries!

At the grocery store last night, we found strawberries. On sale. I was skeptical. No one in their right mind buys strawberries in February!

Luckily for me, I am rarely in my right mind. :) Jerome and I both examined the strawberries closely, but they looked like they would be okay. So we bought a package.

Got home and cut up a few of the strawberries. Right away, I had to taste one of the slices, just to confirm that we didn't have a package of gross strawberries. Definitely NOT gross--perfectly sweet and tasty. Which was good, seeing as I planned to use them in my salads this week. :) (Baby spinach + mandarin oranges + strawberries + dried cranberries + raspberry vinagrette = you call that a salad?!)

So now I'm left wondering--does strawberry season really start in February in Washington? Or am I eating exotic strawberries from who knows where? These strawberries are at least as good as the ones we could get in Carbondale if we waited until June or so. Possibly better, because they're here in February. :)

Friday!

Ah, Fridays are good! :) Not that I have exciting plans for this weekend (I get to work on taxes! YAY! (okay, that's enough sarcasm)), but it'll be nice to relax some and be outside a little if it's not too cold. :)

And yeah, I know that I still have a while before my taxes are due. However, I can't tell myself that if I want to get them done in time. I do, however, have to wait at least until I get my last W2 from my mom. Before we moved out here, I had no idea what our address would be, so I had to change my forwarding address from the university to her house... and then I forgot to change it again... oops! :)

Anyways, as a further after effect of yesterday's mad blog tagging spree, I've decided that the End of the Work Week Wisdom really needs to come back... soooooo...

"Ah, General Tso. I have tasted your chicken. It was very good."
--Jim the Idiot, doing what he does best. (Imagine this in a bad Kung-Fu movie Chinese accent.)

Jim the Idiot, for those who don't know, is my brother. He got the nickname when we were in college from our mutual friends, who were often baffled by the profound/idiotic things he said. Yes, they were often one and the same. :)

Anyway, todays End of the Work Week Wisdom was inspired by my lunch. Because General Tso's Chicken is very good. :)

"Cooking" with Dawn

So last night, for some reason, I had this crazy craving for Big Mac sauce, a.k.a. Thousand Island dressing. However, as we don't eat a lot of salad, and Jerome hates Thousand Island, I had to improvise. I mixed together approximately equal parts of ketchup and mayonnaise, and then tossed in a bit of pickle relish. Voila, nearly perfect on my first try! And surprisingly good on hot dogs. :)

Now the next one I have to try is the dressing that they put on the salad at the cafe downstairs. I have no idea what it is, but it's a sort of thin, watery, coleslaw-like dressing on regular lettuce, rather than minced up cabbage. Oh, and I think it's sweeter than coleslaw dressing... but I haven't eaten coleslaw in years. I wonder if it's some sort of Asian slaw, as it comes with all of the Asian dishes... however, it also comes with the lasagna...

Sadly, I don't even know where to start on trying to make it. It would probably help if I could identify it better. :)

In other news, the injured fingers from last night now have pirate bandaids, and that makes them feel 10 times better. :)

*gasp*

Yeah, it's been another one of those crazy days at work. I'm just now surfacing for a gulp of air, and then probably charging directly back into stuff to do. The nice thing about days like today is that my day goes by quickly; the aggravating thing is not being able to keep up with my blog posting and reading habits.

It doesn't help matters any that we went out for lunch today, but sometimes Jimmy John's is just calling my name from 4-5 blocks away. For those who don't know, Jimmy John's is very much an Illinois thing (it was started there), and very much a college town thing (we lived less than a block from one in Carbondale). To add to the college town part, they're typically open till about 4 a.m., and they deliver so fast that you'd think they have Nightcrawler working for them. So when you're drinking at someone's house or apartment, you can call them and they will be there before you know it. Perfect for college towns. :)

So don't ask me why there's one in the heart of downtown Seattle. Other than the fast factor being both in delivery times and sandwich making times. Even when the lines are all the way to the door (2 lines, each easily 6 people deep), you still have your sandwiches within a few minutes of walking into the building.

Okay, enough rambling about food. Back to work with me. :)

So let's see here...

1) We had snow this weekend! It was sort of big clumps of wet snow, and it didn't last long at all, though it did completely soak through our coats and jeans when we walked from the Punk Rock Flea Market to the bus, and then home from our bus stop.

2) Punk Rock Flea Market went very well for me, and also for the other EtsyRain folks around me. So that was exciting! :)

3) I got a Dresden Dolls patch and Jerome got a Misfits suit coat. No kidding. It's awesome, and it's the right length for his arms. This makes it a bit large on the rest of him, but who cares? :)

4) Stouffer's paninis = good. Red Baron paninis = not so much. If I wanted a sammich on dry toast, I could have made that myself. :p I'm just glad I only bought one of the Red Baron kind, because I had a coupon.

5) I organized all of my shipping stuff yesterday, using a bunch of old Capri-Sun boxes that I had been keeping around for mailing packages. But since very few of my items need to be shipped in boxes (and because I go through a box of Capri-Sun in a week or two), I decided they could be more useful as a little shelving unit. It is awesome, and I will take a picture of it soon. Not glamourous in the slightest, though. Cardboard and duct tape. :)

6) I'm featured on another blog today! :) This time, it's DharmaDesigns! :) I wrote an article about her a while back, and now she has returned the favor! :)

Hurrah for Friday!

Glad it's finally here! This week has dragged quite a bit, which may be tied to the fact that I didn't have a whole lot to do at home, though I was mostly busy at work. Well, most days. :) But I'm looking forward to the weekend, because it will give me a chance to finish up a whole ton of projects that I started this past week. I'm really hoping to finish one of those today or tomorrow, because I can't wait to show it off. :)

We have a rather random End of the Work Week Wisdom today:

"Cuz you know, when in Rome. It's Germany. I'm driving a Porsche."
--Jerome's brain working faster than his mouth

The above statement did vaguely make sense in the context of the conversation we were having, but somehow there are chunks of logic missing between the sentences. I think these chunks stayed in Jerome's brain, while only a few words came out of his mouth. It could be, however, that I just understand what he's trying to say, even when he doesn't say it.

(For the record, he meant that if we were in Germany, and he could drive on the Autobahn, he wanted to drive a Porsche, cuz that's just what you do. :) )

And, finally, I am very glad that Jimmy John's exists in Seattle. We may not be able to get New Kahala, Don Taco, or El Greco until Christmas, but if we're willing to walk about 5-6 blocks from my office, we can have tasty sammiches. :)